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Monday, October 2, 2017

Rob Ore: Rosh Hashanah 5778

Rosh Hashanah 5778

Good Morning, and shana tova!
First, I would like to thank you all for coming to our service this
morning. I am Rob Ore, the President of
Sinai Temple, and, on behalf of the Sinai Board of Trustees, welcome! I’d like to thank Rabbi Alan for his
thoughtful sermon, our guest Cantor, Jennifer Seeger, for leading us in song,
Larisa Chasanov, our pianist this morning, Larry Adelston, our guitarist, and
our Music Director, Martha Alwes. Thank
you to all who have participated in the service this morning, whether reading,
ushering or joining in the singing and prayers.
It is truly a community effort.
And, finally, thanks to everyone who worked so hard setting up the
sanctuary and pods last Sunday.

So, to begin my speech, I have two questions.

What are you? What are you
not? These are questions all people need
to ask themselves. Where does each of us
draw the line between ourselves and others?

This question has many answers in many contexts, because each of us
belongs to many categories. In one
sense, each of us is entirely unique and so the rest of the universe is
“other.” In another sense, we are all
the same, a part of God’s creation, indivisible and indistinguishable from the
rest, so there is no “other.”

Think about where you draw lines in your life. There are lines of species, of race, family,
religion, gender, ethnicity, and citizenship.
These are just the most obvious ones.
The more you begin to consider this question, the more categories and
lines you discover. For example, if you
are a Jew, you probably also identify with one or another subcategory of Jews,
like Reform, Conservative or Orthodox, and each of these has further
subdivisions. If you are an American,
you probably also identify with a given region, dialect, political party or
philosophy. Human beings are multidimensional
Venn diagrams.

We Jews have a special relationship with God as set out in the
Torah. This gives us special privileges
and special responsibilities. During
this season, we are called upon to examine our relationship both with our
Creator and with our fellow creatures.

The Days of Awe are our opportunity to examine where we fit in in all
these hierarchies and categories and to examine whether our behavior this past
year is consistent with who we are as people, as members of our communities and
as children of God. Are we living as our
moral laws direct us, or are we letting our own self-interest and ego dictate
how we relate to God and Humanity?

In the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) we are exhorted to treat the
stranger as ourselves, to afford him the same rights and kindnesses we give to
our own people. That challenges us to
learn to see ourselves in the stranger, to try as much as possible to erase the
line between us. There lies a closer
connection with God.

In all the categories in which we place ourselves, we define self and
other. When we see an injustice
perpetrated on someone, what is our threshold for tolerating that
injustice? Does it depend on how much we
identify with the other person? For most
of us, if something happens to a member of our family, we are more willing to
help than if the same thing happened to a stranger. If I consider you to be inside my circle, I
am more apt to empathize with your situation and react to adversity in your
life than if I consider you to be an outsider.

This is not wrong. If we all
had the capacity to cure all evils of society and help all people, then doing
so selectively based on self-interest would be unconscionable, but we as humans
are limited in our resources and abilities.
We need to make choices in our lives.
The question is, how do we navigate this difficult landscape of self and
other in order to do as much as we should without doing more than we can?

I want to suggest an experiment to you. In the next week, notice how you think about
people you meet. Is your first reaction
a judgment of how they don’t measure up to how you want them to be? Are you focused on how they differ from you? If so, try focusing instead on what you have
in common with them. When I do this
experiment myself, I find that my circle expands, and I begin to treat other
people with more courtesy and understanding.
See what happens for you!

Our spiritual calendar is based on the cycle of Torah, which begins
each year with creation. In a sense, our
lives are recreated and re-energized each year at this season. How horrible it would be if we were doomed to
continue our lives unchanged year after year.
This renewal allows us to break the bad habits and routines we’ve fallen
into over the year and remake our lives.
Of course, part of this process is recognizing our habits. This is what we do symbolically when we
confess our sins. We ask God to forgive
us for our transgressions and accept our promise to return to
righteousness. We ask that we be given
this chance to reform, so that we may be written for good in the Book of Life.

Our Temple calendar is based on the same cycle. That is why we ask people at this season of
the year to reconsider their relationship with—and their commitment to—their
Temple family. Nothing in life is static
and unchanging. Our circumstances change
and so do all our relationships, including our relationship with the
Temple. For this reason, it is necessary
to update our commitments every year, to determine what makes sense for
us.

The Temple, as a living entity, is also not static. Our congregation is constantly changing. People’s lives bring them to our community,
and they look to our Temple for a spiritual home. Particularly in a university community like
Champaign-Urbana, people sometimes leave to pursue opportunities
elsewhere. And, unfortunately, people
also die. The Temple must be able to
adjust to these comings and goings and provide what its membership needs.

We ask that you, as a member of the Temple, consider how the Temple
and its members fit into your life. How
does the Temple serve your family’s needs, and what are you doing to make sure
it continues to be a vital part of the life of this community? The Temple affords many opportunities for
service. I’d like to mention just a few.

Of course, what would a President’s Rosh Hashanah speech be without a
plea for financial support? The Temple does
need money to support its many activities.
I think our current model of membership dues accords perfectly with the
season of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and it is entirely reasonable to take
up this inquiry now. We do not ask
members to pay fixed dues. Rather, we
ask that you determine what contributions make sense given your personal
situation. This is akin to the work we
do in placing our life and conduct under a magnifying glass during the Holiday
season. And this is something we all
need to do at this season each year, because our circumstances are continually
changing. It is part of the stock-taking
of our lives.

But more than just the financial, the Temple needs commitment of
service from its members. This includes
working on committees, joining the Board, volunteering for events, etc. There is no better way of connecting with
others than joining together to accomplish a common goal.

In exploring your relationship with other people this week, why not
also re-evaluate your relationship with the Temple? Is the Temple inside or outside your circle? And what about your relationship with
yourself? Is the way you view yourself
and your abilities a reflection of reality or of habit?

At each stage of life, we have different strengths, abilities and
capacities. What is appropriate for you
may not be so for anyone else. By the
same token, what is appropriate for you now may not depend on what you have
felt capable of in the past. We all grow
and mature. Service to the Temple is a
chance to develop skills you might not be aware you possess. And without making the effort, you may never
know. After all, I never imagined I
would be standing before you as President of the Temple, but here I am! To paraphrase Star Trek’s Guardian of Forever,
“Many such journeys are possible! Let
the Temple be your gateway!”